The Hatchimals children's toy craze during this past holiday season got me thinking about the must-have toys from my childhood. Looking back, I now have a ton of appreciation for my parents when I imagine them waiting in a line with all the other patient parent's to try and snag me a Furby for Christmas.

There are some toys from my childhood that I keep around for nostalgia sake, either because I really liked them at the time or because now they're kind of cool retro toys of the past.

Since our Community is made up of a fairly good mix of different age groups I'm really curious to see what everyone's favorite childhood toys were, and what toy crazes everyone here remembers. So SpiceHeads, what were the best, must-have toys from your childhood? Do you still hold onto any cool old-school toys?

Legos, Tinker Toys, Ring-a-ma-Jigs (I think that's what they were called), Etch-a-Sketch, Matchbox/Hot Wheels, Tiddly Winks was a fun game. As I got older I got into Transformers, Mask, and GI Joe. My mom used to enter all kinds of drawings (by hand via postal mail) and won me a lot of cool toys...I remember having some Thundercats stuff that she had won for me.
Oh, and Atari 2600 circa 1983, playing on an old (at that time) black-and-white TV.

I got a first gen Playstation and a TV one year for Christmas, 98 I think; I grew up the son of a *then* underpaid hired farmhand and finding that in my room was something I was then unable to comprehend, even now looking back i have no idea how they did it.

Legos were always big for me, along with Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars, and course there was my Game Boy! The main "craze" toy that I really wanted and ended up getting were ZipZaps. They were miniature customizable RC cars- about the size of a Matchbox car. RadioShack (back when they were still halfway solvent) was sold out of them for months.